12 Months; 7 Projects

Another calendar year has passed (over two months ago, but oh well), which means it's time to do another round up post of my knitting projects, something I have done annually most years since launching this blog. (My 2018 and 2019 round up posts still aren't done, but I do intend to get them done eventually, and meanwhile you can check out all my other annual posts here, or visit my blog Modwardian to read posts about all my knitting and other projects.)

In 2021, I had fourteen projects on my list and I completed just seven of them. But then there were mitigating factors. I spent the first six weeks of 2021 finishing a mammoth project that I then counted as a 2020 project, and in the fall I spent nearly two months on a cross-stitch project, so I actually didn't do so badly from a needlework productivity standpoint given that my actual knitting year was considerably abbreviated. There were also a few projects I put some serious work into but didn't finish. That'll give me a leg up on this year, when again my knitting project list is fourteen items long. I'm hoping to get more of my planned projects done this year, and this hope is bolstered by the fact that, nine days into March 2022, I've finished two projects and have done quite a lot of work on three more. But we'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, let's have a look at the seven projects I did finish last year.       

My first project of 2021 (if we don't count that albatross of an afghan project that took me until February 13th, 2021, that is), was a reknit. Back in 2017, my friend Christine gave me two skeins of yarn she had bought at Pembroke Farm, Prince Edward Island, while she and her family were in P.E.I. on vacation the summer before. I was quick to knit up most of the yarn into a shawl/wrap pattern. But then I found I had knitter's remorse on two counts. One, the shawl, though pretty, was such an awkward shape and length that I didn't like wearing it. Two, I had 60 grams of the Pembroke Farm yarn left over, which was not enough in itself to make anything, and I couldn't seem to find any yarn that coordinated with it -- it's an offbeat shade of old rose. Eventually I decided to take the wrap apart and knit a rectangular scarf that I would like better, and to use a design with a repeating pattern that I could just knit until the yarn was gone. 

I searched Ravelry for a suitable scarf pattern and found the Duo Columns Reversible Scarf, designed by Quenna Lee, as depicted above. It's a nice-looking design, and is available for free. 

Here's the finished scarf, with both its sides on display. I thought this scarf design would look better fringed, and as I had plenty of yarn to work with, I went ahead and did so. When I was getting close to the minimum scarf length I wanted, I stopped knitting and fringed the cast-on edge, cut a second set of fringe lengths and set them aside, and then resumed knitting on the length. I worked until I had just enough to cast off with, then added the pre-cut fringe to the cast-off edge, with the result that I had no yarn at all left over. 

The completed scarf is 82" long, which is much longer than I would normally make a scarf. I usually wear my scarves singly around my neck, with the ends reaching my waist. The ends of this scarf reach to my knees when I wear it a single time around my neck. 

 

But then this is a scarf that looks best wrapped a few times around the neck anyway. 

I don't particularly like making or wearing big needle knits, but there's no denying that they make for gratifyingly quick and easy projects. It also made me smile to use my 9mm needles. Some years ago I saw them in a Salvation Army thrift store, priced at $1. I knew I didn't have a pair of 9mm straights, and I stood in the store with the needles in my hand for a few minutes, mentally debating buying them. With money so tight, I try never to buy anything unless I am absolutely sure that I will use it. At the time, I'd never used size 9mm needles in 35+ years of knitting, and maybe I never would. But I told myself, "It is just a dollar, you'll never get a better deal, and if you don't buy them and do need 9mm needles at some point, you'll kick yourself because you'll wind up having to pay a lot more." I bought the needles, and then just three months later was gratified to find that a pattern I'd picked out called for a pair of 9mm needles. This project is only the second or third time I've used these needles, but I'm still smugly satisfied that I made the right call that day. 

This project used up the 60 grams I had left over when I knit this yarn up the first time, so I'm going to count this project as resulting in a net stash decrease of 60 grams. 

My grandniece Cauliflower turned 12 in August 2021, and of course such an occasion called for a sweater.

I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern and found the Daisy Delight sweater pattern and the coordinating hat pattern you see pictured above. They are both Drops designs, and available for free. In March 2021, when the stores in Ontario were briefly open, I went to Romni Wools on Queen Street and bought 450 grams of Drops Karisma in Rose (shade # 80). I had some cream Drops Karisma DK left over from another project that I decided to use for the daisies, and a little Jamieson's of Shetland DK in Leprechaun (shade #259) left over from this project that would do for the daisy centres -- the sweater pattern requires just two rounds of the daisy centre colour, so it wouldn't take much. 

Here's the finished sweater, in a size 11/12. It knitted up in just a few weeks and with no mistakes to speak of. I was reasonably pleased with it.

Here's the hat. It turned out fine too. A matched sweater and cap set is such a cute look on a young girl. 

This photo shows Cauliflower's gift in its entirety. It's not much fun for a kid to get a wool sweater in August, so I threw in a few inexpensive items from the dollar store and thrift shop: a planner pad with stickers, a temporary tattoo kit, and a little owl ring (Cauliflower has a thing for owls). Not too shabby, and I hoped it was cool enough to suit a 12-year-old. It's going to get harder to please Cauliflower from here on in, as she'll be developing her own tastes and becoming more conscious of what's in and cool, and meanwhile her middle-aged great-aunt is becoming increasingly out of touch with what's in and cool.  

I had 25 grams of the new rose yarn left, and used 23 grams of the cream yarn and 2 grams of the green yarn that I had on hand, so I broke even on this project in terms of stash increase/decrease.  

My grandnephew Bug turned 8 in July 2021. In late 2020, when I was planning my projects for this coming year, I searched Ravelry for a suitable sweater pattern for him. I ended up selecting the one depicted above, which is the imaginatively named "Boy's Sweater, No. 7", designed by Gretchen Baum. This pattern was originally published in 1948. It amuses me to think that Bug's great-grandfather (born 1938), grandfather (born 1963), and father (born 1981), could all have worn a sweater made from this pattern without ever looking the least bit out of date. Such is the staying power of classic knitwear design.

The pattern called for a dark green and white colour scheme, but when I was shopping for the yarn in March 2021, I selected 250 grams of a tweedy charcoal (Drops Merino Extra Fine Mix, shade 03, Anthrazit) and 50 grams of a cream (Drops Karisma Uni Colour, shade 01, Off White) for my version. 

   

Here's the the finished item. I'm pleased with the look of it. It's a handsome sweater for a handsome boy. I used a DK for this project although, according to its Ravelry page, it calls for a sport weight. I think it might actually be intended for fingering. As a result I used considerably more yarn than the pattern called for. Thankfully Romni Wools had the three extra 50g skeins I needed in stock. The knit was also stiffer in its feel than I would have liked, though wet blocking helped somewhat. I can't say I regret my choice of yarn, though, as the resulting sweater turned out a modern size 8/9 (I checked the measurements against another contemporary pattern), rather than the narrower 1948 size 8/9 of the pattern. That should give Bug a little room to grow in, because he's on the small side of average for his age.

 And, because a wool sweater is not an exciting gift for an boy turning eight in July, I added a few dollar store trinkets: a scavenger game that can be played in one's own home, and two Hot Wheels miniature cars. 

This project used 2 grams of cream Drops Karisma that I had left over from another project, and there were 10 grams of cream and 15 grams of charcoal left over from the new yarn that I bought for this project, so that's a net stash increase of 23 grams. 

A few years ago, I decided I wanted a scarf and hat set in green. I have a pair of spring green leather gloves I'd picked up at Winners for $20 years before, and I wanted a set that would coordinate with them. That spring green would also look nice with my dark brown wool coat. 

I say I decided this a few years ago because it took me several years to find just the right shade of green yarn in the DK weight I needed for the pattern I'd picked out. Greens can be tricky to coordinate. If they're the least bit off, they look terrible. I took one of the green gloves with me whenever I went yarn shopping, and struck out many times. Eventually, in the spring of 2021, I found what I wanted: 400 grams of 220 Superwash Merino in Peridot. (220 Superwash Merino is officially listed as a worsted, but it really isn't a worsted -- it's between a DK and a worsted.) The green was several shades darker than the green of the gloves, but the right tone, and the gloves won't be right next to the hat and scarf when I've got them on, so I thought it would do. 

It makes me smile that the yarn shade is called Peridot. I was born in August, and peridot is my birthstone. When I was growing up, I used to hate peridot and wish I'd been born in any other month so that I could have a birthstone I liked, but one day in my early thirties I clued in to the fact that peridot green actually really suits me and goes with my wardrobe's colour palette -- I even had several pieces of spring green clothing in my wardrobe already. Since then I've acquired a little collection of peridot jewelry that I love, and sometimes buy or make additional clothing or accessory items in that colour. And then I ended up working on and completing this peridot-coloured project in August, so it was doubly appropriate.  

For the hat pattern, I chose the Armley Beret, designed by Woolly Wormhead. It's an attractive design, and I thought the little tapering cables around the brim looked like little trees, which would accord well thematically with the green I wanted to use for the yarn. As for the scarf, there was no pattern, but that's never stopped me before when I was making a set. It's generally so easy to improvise a design for a scarf that will go with a hat design.

Here's the finished hat and and scarf. I'm pleased with both. The hat knitted up quickly and without any problems that I recall. 

The one modification I made to the hat pattern was to trim it with a tassel rather than a pom pom, as I'm more of a tassel type. 

And here's the hat and scarf with the gloves. They don't look as though they go very well in this photo, but that's just the lighting -- the combination looks better in person than it does in the photo. Better that than the other way around, I suppose.

  

As for the scarf, I toyed with the idea of doing repeats of the tapered cable motif for the entire length of the scarf, but that would have meant having to repeatedly adjust the number of stitches and I didn't want the hassle. I wasn't sure it would look all that good anyway. Instead, I worked three continuous lines of the bottom cable, and for the edging I used the 2 x 2 twisted cable that was used on the hat brim. I had a ridiculous amount of trouble getting the edging right, so I'll just write here for my own future reference that when picking up stitches for edging along a cabled knit, picking up *three out of every four loops* gives one just the right number of stitches so that the edging will be neither too full nor too taut to sit right. The scarf is just over 6' long and 7 inches wide. 

Incidentally, I've resolved that this set must be my last new hat and scarf set for some time. Besides this new peridot set, and the reknitted old rose scarf featured above, I have a cream set, an old rose set, a plum set, a variegated set, a brown and orange fair isle set, a mohair tam, and a peacock design wool tam, all of my making, plus some other assorted purchased scarves. All of these items are in excellent condition, and guess what, I only have one head and neck to wear them on. I have hats and scarves to go with every one of my coats and with every possible outfit, and it would be a senseless extravagance for me to spend any more money on others until I've worn out some of the ones I already have. 

I'm sure the crazy knitter part of my brain will try to make a case for yet another set pretty soon (i.e, "I don't have a red set!" or "I found this irresistible pattern that I MUST make!"), but the logical, budget-conscious part of my brain intends to be very stern and a hard sell on the matter. 

I had 10 grams of this peridot yarn left after I completed this project, so that's stash growth of 10 grams.

When it came time to pick a design for my honorary niece Olivia's Christmas sweater, I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern. I soon narrowed my choices down to two patterns, then decided on the above design, which is I Can Sing a Rainbow, by Jenni Bennett. The other pattern was a classic design, but I thought screw it, I was going with the fun one. The time will come when I'll be making nothing but classic styles for Olivia. At present she's 5 years old, and this is my window for making her cute, whimsical designs because at this age she will relate to them rather than thinking that they're uncool. This pattern also only ran to a size six, so this was my last chance to make it for her. 

As for yarn selection, my first step was to go through my stash of DK yarn and pick out the heart colours. This is a great design for using up a lot of little odds and ends of yarn, as it only takes 10 grams of each colour. I found seven that looked pretty together, and made a yarn sampler that I could take to the store to use as a convenient aid in selecting the main colour for the sweater. I liked the idea of a neutral background colour, and decided I wanted an olive shade. It was a bit hard to find the right olive DK, but in the end I went with Sandnesgarn Alpakka in shade 9554, which is a sort of olive khaki. I bought six skeins, or 300 grams. 

And here's the completed sweater. I'm a little meh on the results. I wasn't thrilled with my arrangement of colours in the heart, but I wasn't going to rip it all out and do it again, either. It will do, and I was confident Olivia and her mother would both like it, which is what matters. (They did.) 

It only took 200 grams of the olive yarn to knit this sweater, and I was able to return 2 skeins for store credit at Romni Wools, and to use that store credit when buying yarn for my 2022 projects in the December sale at Romni. (I always think of whatever extra yarn I've purchased for a current project as a down payment on my next project.) 

Then I had just 10 grams left over of the newly purchased olive yarn, and I used approximately 10 grams of each of the rainbow-coloured stash yarn (or 70 grams), so that's a net stash decrease of -60 grams.   

On my birthday in August 2021, my favourite gift of any that I received was the news that my nephew Luke and his wife were expecting their first child in February 2022. Of course, my immediate response was to start planning what I was going to make for my impending grandniece or grandnephew. By the end of that day I had decided I would make the baby a knitted baby blanket and pair of booties, and also a framed cross-stitch motif with the baby's name on it out of a kit I had on hand. I then selected suitable patterns for both a baby boy and a baby girl, and messaged Luke on Facebook with my congratulations and a request that he let me know what he and his wife were having in advance, as I'd be making something for the baby and would need some lead time. Two months later, he dutifully let me know that they were expecting a boy. 

The pattern you see above is the one I'd selected for a boy, the ABC Baby Blanket, designed by Jenny Williams. It's an attractive, easy, quick knit. It could even be an excellent stash buster if one knitted the squares in different colours, but I wanted a solid colour for my version. 

The yarn I chose was Lion Brand's Wool Ease in the Stillwater shade, which I would describe as a light sea green. It's 20% wool, 80% acrylic, which gives it both the nice feel of wool and makes it easy care and (I hope!) durable, which is just what one wants in a baby blanket.

This project knitted up quickly and without issue. As I worked, I thought back to the baby blanket I had made for Luke when he was born in September 1987, just a month after my fourteenth birthday. In those days I didn't have much access to patterns or yarn. I never even knew Vogue Knitting magazine existed at that point -- that revelation would come when I saw it on the newsstand in a convenience store when my mother and I stopped to get milk one evening in the spring of 1988. The baby blanket that I made for Luke wasn't made according to a pattern at all. I knitted a number of garter stitch squares in baby fingering yarn in white and pastel blue, and sewed them together. I'd never make something so basic now. I don't think I even wove in the ends, and I know the squares weren't properly seamed. I was, after all, only thirteen. But that amateurish baby blanket became Luke's blankie and he was very, very attached to it. Over the next several years blankie became very much the worse for the wear. It was no longer the fresh blue and white it had been when new, but grayish and discoloured, with a number of "you don't even want to know what made that" stains, and it was fraying and raveling in a number of places. It got to the point that it was such a disgusting object that I could never see it without wanting to scream, "KILL IT WITH FIRE," and stuff it in the wood stove at my brother's farmhouse, but Luke clearly didn't care what his beloved blankie looked like. 

Then one mid-winter day when Lukie was four, he took his blanket outdoors with him when he went out to play, left it outside, and didn't realize it was missing until bedtime. Luke became quite agitated and demanded that a search be made for it, but trying to find a grayish blanket after dark on a farm in mid-winter in Southwestern Ontario is an exercise in hopeless futility if I ever heard of one. The blanket could have been anywhere in quite a large, unlit area, there were piles of snow everywhere, and it had snowed that afternoon. My brother tried to take the tough love approach, saying to him sternly at eight o'clock, "No Luke, you took your blanket outside when you shouldn't have and you lost it, and you're just going to have to go to bed without it, and we'll have a look for it tomorrow." This reasoning was apparently lost on Luke, as when ten o'clock arrived he was still screaming. Sympathy, substitutes, bribes, and threats were also of no avail. My brother and his wife were, as my sister-in-law has put it, "out there in the yard with flashlights and shovels like a pair of fools until well past eleven" in a desperate effort to find the blanket, while Luke stood at the storm door, alternately sobbing loudly and repeatedly shrieking, "FIND IT!!!!! FIND IT!!!!!" They couldn't find it, and Luke eventually passed out from sheer exhaustion at about midnight, after he'd been crying and screaming non-stop for four hours straight.  

I have thought of that first baby blanket I ever made and of that incident every time I have knitted a baby blanket since, and hoped I wasn't kickstarting a similar chain of events for the new baby's poor parents. And now I've come full circle, and have knit a baby blanket for Luke's son. I wouldn't wish an evening like that on any parent, but I suppose if it should happen my brother and his wife's reaction will be something along the lines of, "PAYBACK SOMETHING SOMETHING, BOY."   

The finished blanket. It's much nicer than the one I made for Luke, with a better design, better yarn, and better workmanship, and I am pleased with it, but I can't help feeling that perhaps it should have been scarlet or some other eye-catching colour, lest it get left outside at night. I've made the baby a pair of booties too, but in 2022, so those will be included in next year's post. 

I purchased all new yarn for this blanket, and had 55 grams left over, so that's a stash increase of 55 grams. 

Further up in this post, I wrote about the sweater and cap I made for my grandniece Cauliflower for her twelfth birthday. Then at the end of 2021, I impulsively started working on the one for her thirteenth birthday, in August 2022. It just seemed like the most appealing project on my list for the coming year. I have been alternately making a dress for her on her "odd" birthdays and a sweater on her "evens", but the dress I made her for eleventh birthday in 2020 was the last one I am ever likely to sew for her. She's reached the age where she needs her dresses fitted on her, and I can't do that as I so seldom see her, so it's sweaters from now on. My sister-in-law tells me this is just as well, as Cauliflower isn't currently as much into dresses as she was when she was little, and would probably just as soon get sweaters anyway. 

This project plan began with my finding 100 grams of bright blue (left over from a cardigan I made for my father years ago) and 190 grams of Patons Decor in Rose Temptation (left over from a cardigan I made for me in 2018) in my stash, deciding they looked nice together, and looking for a sweater design that would be suitable for them both, with the addition of some new yarn in a coordinating main colour. 

This year I directed my search to adult-size designs, instead of children's patterns, as Cauliflower has recently begun to wear women's size extra small. It didn't take me long to settle on the Vintersol sweater, designed by Jennifer Steingass, which I would be knitting in its smallest size. I already owned a copy of it as I have used the design before to make a sweater for me, so that was a cost-efficient plus. Not that a teenaged girl would want to wear the same style of sweater as her middle-aged great aunt, but again, I seldom see her, and will just have to remember not to wear that particular sweater around her for the next few years. 

For my main colour of yarn, I went to Michaels with a yarn sampler of the two colours I already had, and selected Lion Brand Wool-Ease in their Riverside shade, or as I'd describe it, a rich dark blue. I bought three skeins of yarn a skein at a time with Michael's coupons, which brought the total cost of this project to $16.59. 

The finished sweater. It didn't photograph all that well -- the rose colour looks a little psychedelic -- but I am quite pleased with its actual appearance, and I think Cauliflower will like it too. The design is so effective, and the colours work together well. I'm going to put together a manicure kit for her as well, to accompany the sweater and help Cauliflower embark on her teenage years in style.     

This project used 80 grams of the bright blue yarn and 80 grams of the Patons Decor Rose Temptation from my stash, and left me with 10 grams of the new Lion Brand Wool Ease Riverside, so that's a net stash decrease of 150 grams for this seventh project.   

When I add up all the increases and subtract all the decreases, I find that I have a year-end stash decrease of 182 grams, which isn't bad. My yarn stash resides in four plastic boxes kept under my bed, and while I've been wanting to reduce it to one or two boxes for years, it at least isn't growing, and the boxes are gradually becoming emptier. 

This post has been held up so long not because I didn't have my photos and project information ready -- I had all that done by mid-January -- but because the effort of coming up with some pithy words to sum up the year that has passed and the current one as it's progressing, has felt beyond me. Again and again, throughout late January, February, and so far this month, I would open the draft, read and edit and type a few words at the end, and then close the draft with an exhausted sigh. Our world seems to be a constant and ever-worsening state of crisis, what with the seemingly never-ending pandemic, the looming climate emergency, ever-growing financial disparity, numerous wars and countless terrorist attacks, the rise of right-wing extremism, government incompetence and corruption, misogynistic, homophobic, and racist oppression, and the tide of deliberate misinformation designed to mislead and distract us and to destabilize our society. And then, in my own life, I struggle with chronic fatigue issues, financial difficulties, and extreme isolation. I'm not even making a living, and it makes me feel terrible that I'm not pulling my own weight, let alone doing my part to make the world a better place by lending a hand to others. Even though I try to keep myself on an even keel emotionally by being grateful for what I do have -- so, so many people in this world are far worse off than I am -- and to focus on what I can do rather than what I can't, I often feel helpless, useless, overwhelmed, and afraid of what's to come. 

But... I can knit. Every evening of 2021, whatever happened that day, when my fridge died, when it took 40 days to get a new one, when my microwave died, when my beloved Trilby died one September morning at the age of 15 leaving a small, cat-shaped hole in my heart, when a routine task such as a trip to the grocery store had left me too tired to do another thing that day, when I'd been too low in energy that day to even really get up at all, and when I was in any case always too fried by that hour of the day to do any really taxing mental or physical work, when I realized it had been months since I spent any time with anyone, I would sit up in bed, propped on pillows and knitting or doing other needlework while I watched the news, and then while I watched something more relaxing and enjoyable, such as a murder mystery drama or horror film. My evenings relaxing in bed with my knitting and watching whatever's playing on my laptop often feel like the calm centre of my life. And then too, the things I produced in that time were of some small use: keeping a baby warm, making a child feel extra-loved and special on their birthday, or helping me look and feel more put together. 

Not everyone is so fortunate as to have the physical dexterity to knit, the opportunity to learn how to do so, or the time and the access to yarn, needles, patterns and other technical resources that I have, and while knitting doesn't do a lot to make the world a better place, it is a help in the task of staying calm and carrying on, and that in itself is valuable. So, when I say I count my blessings, my ability to knit is one of them. It's a little thing, but when one is adrift in a stormy sea, sometimes those little things can serve as a flotational device, making a crucial difference in keeping one afloat.

And in these days when everyone is having a hard time, my hope for my readers is that, whatever happened in your lives in 2021, whatever is happening at present, that knitting is a comfort and a pleasure to you as well, helping you cope and making it easier for you to deal with whatever else you have on your plate.  

12 Months; 7 Projects

Well everyone, here is my round up post of all my knitting projects from 2020. It's late, of course, but not so late as my 2018 and 2019 posts are, given that they, um, haven't been posted yet. But I do still intend to get them done. They are being held up by the fact that I designed some of my knitting projects in both those years and want to get the patterns written up and published before I post about the sample knit. I have a total of six knitting patterns I would like to get ready for publication by the end of 2021, and I have two draft "round up posts" that I can post when the patterns are ready. Meanwhile, I am routinely posting about my individual finished projects on my blog Modwardian if anyone wants a look at what I make.  

Regarding the photo above... usually I choose my nicest detail shot of the year to head these round-up posts, but this year the photo above seemed, if not the most attractive shot, certainly the most fitting for 2020, which as we all know was an absolute dumpster fire of a year for everyone. However, we have grounds to hope things are going to get better in 2021: the process of vaccinating for COVID19 is underway, and there are signs that the political landscape is shifting in response to public demand -- the most notable of which is that the most powerful country in the world has a responsible adult for head of state again. 

My life changed less in 2020 than that of most people. I have chronic fatigue issues and have been struggling financially for many years now, and was already more or less homebound and isolated because I have neither the money nor the energy to go anywhere or do much. Sometimes when I saw or heard complaints about the isolation and practical difficulties occasioned by the pandemic, I would think, "WELL HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY WORLD." Many of the measures I've taken to conserve money and energy worked well for pandemic conditions: I only go grocery shopping once a week and almost never eat out; I deliberately chose a  bang-less hairstyle that grows out well so that I can get away with just having it cut twice a year; I colour my own hair, do my own nails, and tweeze my own eyebrows; I have many online friends and "live online" to a great extent; my hobbies are all things I do at home by myself; I use every scrap of everything and know how to repair and maintain things in order to reduce the number of things I buy, etc. 

Still, the pandemic had its effect on me. I would say I was somewhat less productive than usual this year as my chronic fatigue seemed to get worse, possibly because of the stress of [gestures vaguely at everything] all this. And there was an impact even on my needlework, making it sometimes difficult to get needed supplies, or to give things I made as presents to people, and even on what I made. I made a quilted blanket in 2020 that I think of as my Coronavirus Quilt, and I also sewed 38 face masks: 5 for me, 13 as gifts for family and friends, and 20 for sale. 

But let's take a look at the things I knitted while home alone during 2020. 

In January 2020 my first knitting project of the year was a sweater for my grandnephew Bug's seventh birthday.

Back in the fall of 2019, when I was planning my knitting projects for the coming year, I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern for Bug's birthday sweater, and found the one you see in the photo above, Seashore Stripes, which is a Drops design. There's something so pleasing about the stripe arrangement and, rarely for me, I decided to make the sweater in the sample colours, or as close as I could get to them. I visited Romni Wools in December and bought yarn for three projects, and one of them was Bug's. I went with Cascade Yarns 220 Superwash in gray, off-white, Navy, Really Red, and Turtle. The colours were all a really good match, except for the green, which is slightly brighter than the grayish green in the sample, but it went well enough with the other colours. The 220 Superwash is a worsted yarn rather than the Aran weight the pattern specifies, but one can correct for that by knitting a design with needles a half size larger than the pattern calls for, in this case a 5 mm rather than a 4.5 mm.

And here's the finished product. It was quite a straightforward knit and I was done in two weeks. The one design change I made was to knit the bottom and cuff ribbing in navy rather than in gray as the in the sample. This saved me money because I was able to get this project done with just one skein of gray (and to subsequently return the other gray skeins I bought for store credit), and I also had less left navy yarn left over. I made a mistake on the sleeve stripes, but I don't care -- it looks just as nice the way I did it. I'm pleased with the result: it's both classic and smart.

At Bug's age, he doesn't care very much about clothes, so I bought him a couple of dollar store items he could play with. He likes to read, prefers non-fiction to fiction, and is interested in science, so I bought him a couple of children's National Geographic books, a toy kaleidoscope, and he also got two new face masks. I'm sure nothing depicted here went over as big as the whoopee cushion I gave him for his fifth birthday, but my niece tells me Bug was happy with his present.

I had a total of 160 grams of newly purchased yarn left over after I finished this project.

This project plan began when I decided I'd like a cotton sweater to go with with my summer weight olive khaki pants and shorts. I liked the idea of a classic Breton striped sweater in olive and a contrasting colour, so I thought I'd make one in that style.

I searched Ravelry for a suitable striped sweater pattern and settled on Nothing But Stripes!, designed by emteedee, which is an interesting contemporary take on the Breton stripe sweater and looked great in all the project photos I looked at. I visited Toronto's Romni Wools store to shop for suitable yarn, and was happy to find yarn that was just what I wanted at a bargain basement price in Romni's actual bargain basement: 200 grams of Schachenmayr Catania Solids in 253 Jade, and 200 grams in shade 414, which doesn't seem to be listed on either Ravelry or the Schachenmayr website, but is a deep olive.

And here's the result, paired with a light khaki skirt I made some years back. The olive khaki pants and shorts I have are darker in tone and will work better with the sweater, but I can't put them on my dressmaker's form.

A sweater that I should have been able to make in under three weeks ended up taking nine for reasons that were my own stupid fault. First I assumed that a size 38 German was equivalent to a size 38 in inches. It so wasn't, and I got as far as the chest before I realized it. I had to rip it all out and start again in a size 42. Then when I was nearly done the body, I realized that the sweater was going to be far too long -- I should have done the math on the stripes. I had to rip back nearly to the beginning that time, and begin the stripe pattern with two rows of the olive instead of just one.

It was around this point that I also realized that I hadn't bought enough yarn to make the larger size. I went back to Romni Wools where I bought two extra 50 gram skeins of the olive and one extra 50 gram skein of Jade -- it was the last skein of the Jade that they had, and I could only hope I was going to have enough yarn.

Then when I was nearly done the first sleeve, I realized it was going to be too short, and I had to rip it out, calculate what the stripe pattern needed to be to make it the right length (I had to add *two* "8 rows of Jade/8 rows of Olive" stripes), and reknit it that way.

Then too, soon after I began work on the first sleeve, I realized I had made a mistake with the increases on the yoke. It had come out too short compared to the measurement on the diagram pattern, and I added an inch which proved to be a mistake, as that last inch was created by the stitches cast on when the body was connected under the armhole. That inch I had added made the yoke too long and the body too short, which in turn made for an awkward-looking fit. At first I couldn't face the idea of ripping out nearly the entire sweater yet again and I thought I could live with it, but after I finished the first sleeve and tried the sweater on, I realized I couldn't. I ripped out the sleeve, and ripped out the body back to the bottom of the yoke, and reknitted it yet again. This time I managed to get it right. You can imagine how many extra ends I had to deal with when it came time to finish the sweater, but I just got on with it and got it done.

I think I essentially knitted this sweater three times over. Fortunately, after all of that, I do quite like the sweater.

And I had just 40 grams of each colour of yarn left, so I had bought the right amount of yarn for my sweater too. As this project was made with new yarn, that's a stash increase of 80 grams.

 

Project plan number three began when I was making my knitting list in late 2019 and decided to knit my honorary niece Olivia a sweater for her Christmas 2020 present. I'd picked out a really cute pattern that required a DK weight yarn. Then I got 700 grams of the Loops & Threads Meandering Serpentine in dark salmon (pictured above) in my stocking on Christmas Day, 2019. (Santa has, um, large stockings to fill at my parents' place.) I decided I ought to use some of that yarn to make Olivia's sweater rather than buying new yarn -- it suits her colouring -- so I searched for a suitable worsted weight design for it.

I settled on the pattern depicted above, which is the Children's Celtic Braid Top-Down Sweater, designed by Vera Sanon. It's a nice classic piece, and I'm always an easy sell on Celtic-style cables.

Then, because I had loads of the Meandering Serpentine to work with, I selected a hat pattern. Little girls do like their clothes to have matching accessories such as hats and purses. I wasn't too picky about the hat design -- it just had to be a worsted weight tam pattern that was suitable for adapting to match the sweater. I decided on the Little Bird Hat, designed by Brew City Yarns.

And here's the finished sweater. The pattern was a straightforward one and reasonably clearly written, so the knitting proceeded quite smoothly. It's knitted in one piece out of a single colour of yarn, so there was very little finishing to do. After the last project I made, this was a huge relief.

Then I made the hat. Instead of making the band a plain rib as the pattern calls for, I used the twisted rib stitch from the neckband, cuffs, and hem of the sweater. I nixed the stitchwork used in the body of the hat in the design, and just knitted the hat in plain stockinette. Then, because the resulting hat looked a little too plain, I added a tassel to the top.

The sweater and cap together do make for a smart little set. I bought some dollar store things to go with it: a picture book, a  colouring book and box of crayons, a stuffed toy hedgehog, some hair clips, etc. I was unable to see Olivia in person at all in 2020, but I mailed her Christmas present to her, and her mother took pictures of her opening her gift on Christmas day and emailed them to me. There was a photo of Olivia in her little tam that was especially adorable -- she has French background, and looked like a tiny Parisienne off to discuss existentialism and her new train set in some café. 

This project used 240 grams of what I'm going to count as stash yarn, given that I didn't buy it myself. I still had 460 grams of the Meandering Serpentine left, but never fear -- I had a plan to use that up too. 

Those 460 grams of the Meandering Serpentine yarn were more than enough to make a sweater for me. 

I'm not thrilled with the look of the salmon colour of the yarn on me, but I thought it would be wearable if combined with a couple of greens. I had a 100 gram skein of lime green worsted yarn in my stash (which was bought so long ago I no longer know what brand it is), and all I'd have to do was purchase a single skein of olive green worsted. I searched Ravelry for a suitable tri-colour pattern and found the Vintersol design, by Jennifer Steingass, pictured above. It's really lovely. And then I purchased a skein of Red Heart Soft in Dark Leaf. It's an Aran, which wasn't an ideal combination for a worsted, but greens are tricky to coordinate, and that was the only skein Michaels had that was the right tone.

And here's the finished project. I knitted it almost exactly as directed, and just changed the shaping a little bit. The pattern called for the sweater to be wider through the hip section than in the chest area, but since I'm actually smaller through the hips than I am through the chest and don't need that extra width, I made the hip area of the sweater the same width as the chest. I'm still not taken with that salmon yarn, but it won't be right next to my face, and it's certainly a passable-looking sweater that will be fine (and probably nearly indestructible) for around home wear. I had to put an olive twill skirt with the sweater in this photo as I didn't have a skirt that would go with this sweater, but for actual wear I will pair it with the olive khakis I often wear around home in winter. 

This project used up all of the 100 gram lime green I had on hand, all of the olive green skein I bought, and 270 grams of the salmon, so that's a stash decrease of 370 grams. I still have 190 grams of the salmon left to use up. Oh well, I'm sure I can come up with another project plan for that sooner or later. It is, after all, what I am so prone to do.

My next project was a Mother's Day gift. My mother has a thing for all things owl. As she says, "They're wise. And they have big eyes." When planning or buy gifts for her, I try to keep an eye out for useful owl-themed stuff that she would like. Over the years I've given her owl cloth shopping bags, an owl brooch, an owl Christmas tree decoration, an iron owl trivet, an owl tea towel, owl potholders, and a little red owl kitchen timer (you twist the head around to set it). 

When I came across the Oswald Owl cushion cover pattern, designed by Martin Storey, that you see depicted above, I knew it would be just the thing to make for a gift for my mother. It's a relatively simple yet striking design, and it's cute in a polished, adult way.

Here is my version of Oswald Owl. I used Loops & Threads Impeccable in Putty and Walnut Tweed. I was trying to keep it neutral so that my mother could choose where to put it in her house, and while I was making it went through a stage of thinking I'd gone too far on the neutral front, that the colourway looked dull and ugly, but once it was done I found I didn't mind the look of it. 

The pattern says just to seam the cushion together on all four sides, but I think it's worth the extra effort to put zippers in cushion covers -- you can take the cover off the cushion form and wash it. I would have preferred the zipper to be the main colour of the cushion, but I didn't have one that colour and did have a brown one the colour of the contrast yarn in my zipper box, so I went with it. The one I used was actually one I ripped out of a brown hoodie I made and then had to rip out and knit again as a pullover because a section of it felted -- zippers are tough and durable and it's a good frugal and green habit to salvage zippers that are still in good condition from worn-out or damaged items. 

I think the brown zipper looks all right. It doesn't show when the cushion is standing upright anyway, and it will be standing upright most of the time. I used the zipper installation method I came up with in 2018: make two crochet chains out of the yarn, sew them to the zipper, then use the loops of the crochet chain to sew the zipper into the cushion. (There is an illustrated and more detailed explanation of this method in this post.) 

I sewed my own pillow form out of some leftover ivory linen fabric I had on hand. By my calculations, as long as you have remnant fabric on hand to serve as ticking, it's slightly cheaper to make pillow forms than it is to buy them (and it takes less time to make one than it does to shop for one), and one can also make them to exactly the size and plumpness desired. 

This cushion was my Mother's Day present for this year (along with two masks and a tissue case), though it was presented in mid-August. My mother wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the cushion, but she didn't seem to actually dislike it either, and with her, that's a win. My sister warned Mum to keep an eye on this cushion when my niece Peaches or my grandniece Cauliflower are visiting her house, as they love owls too and the pillow might mysteriously vanish around the time of their departure.    

 

This next project came to be because I wanted a brown-tone hat and scarf set to go with my plain brown winter coat. I thought fair isle would be a nice design direction. I also decided I would make a pair of brown gloves to go with the set. I still have the pair of brown knitted gloves I made in 2014, but I've worn them so much that it would be a good idea to have a second knitted pair that I could leave in my coat pockets rather than constantly transferring the one pair I have between coats. 

I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern, and found the Pine Creek design, by Mary Henderson, which I loved at first sight. I decided I'd get two shades of brown and a contrast colour to knit it with. Now, what glove pattern should I use? I didn't want to make the gloves in that fair isle pattern too, as my rule is that while wearing two matching knitted pieces is a nice coordinated look, three knitted pieces in the same distinctive pattern are too much of a good thing -- it's too matchy-matchy a look. But I could knit the gloves in the same dark brown yarn so as to make them look like a set, and then the gloves also could be worn separately with all my winter coats.   

After searching for a suitable glove pattern on Ravelry, I settled on the Nisu pattern, designed by Maraka Mari. They are plain without being too plain, and I thought the cabled pattern on the back complemented the fair isle pattern of the Pine Creek set. 

With my patterns selected, it was off to Toronto's Romni Wools to pick out the yarn. I bought three skeins of Mirasol Sulka Nina in Cafe Royale, which is a lovely blend of merino, alpaca, and silk that feels fantastic against the skin, then for my lighter shade of brown and contrast colour, I bought two skeins of  Sandnes Garn Mini Alpakka: one in shade 2652, which is a light brown, and one skein of the same yarn in shade 3508, which is a sort of muted pumpkin.   

As you can imagine, this project was a lot of work, involving as it did not only lightweight yarns and small needles, but also fair isle. But it went smoothly. I don't think I made any mistakes to speak of. My one regret was that I hadn't chosen a lighter shade of brown than the Sandnes Garn Mini Alpakka 2652 -- a higher level of contrast would have made the set much more striking and shown the design to better effect. It's too muted for my liking as is. 

This is the first cowl I have ever made. I get the appeal of a cowl -- they are very practical as they stay in place, which means they are unlikely to get lost, and they provide coverage -- but I prefer the look of a scarf. However, while I did consider turning the cowl design into a scarf design, with this particular project, the cowl was the way to go. The underside of a fair isle scarf wasn't going to look attractive, and I was not interested in knitting a tube fair isle scarf. I was happy with the way the finished cowl sat on me, so that's good.  

Here's the tam. This is such a lovely pattern. The photos didn't show the orange yarn accurately -- it's a sickly golden yellow here.

Once the cowl and tam were complete, it was on to the gloves. 

The gloves gave me serious attitude when I was working on them. Really, glove, who raised you?

The finished gloves, which are handsome and feel wonderful to wear. As well as they turned out, knitting this pair of gloves was a wholesome reminder of why I don't knit gloves more often. They are so finicky and fiddly to make. I do think it is worth doing occasionally, as one does wind up with a perfectly fitted pair of gloves. But I wouldn't want to do it often, or ever make gloves for anyone else, as the intended wearer would have to sit beside me while I worked, and let me try the glove in progress on their hand every five minutes when I'm working on the fingers. 

The completed tam, cowl, and gloves. I can't help regretting my choice of a not-light-enough brown, but otherwise this is a set I am very happy with.

I had 110 grams of yarn left once I completed this project, and as I bought all new yarn for it, that's a 110 gram stash increase. 

And now for the last project I worked on in 2020. It was quite the albatross. 

My sister is what I call "Christmas crazy", meaning she really loves decorating for Christmas and goes all out on it. She also has an especial thing for snowmen-themed stuff. Circa 2018, I got the idea of making her a special Christmas afghan -- something with snowmen on it, if possible. 

I searched the Ravelry database for a suitable Christmas afghan design, and came across the Patons-designed Christmas Eve Afghan pattern depicted above. I thought the happy-looking little snowmen were cute, and that the design had a bit of a country feel to it, which was fortuitous in this case as my sister's tastes lean a little country. The afghan design is basically lap-sized with a finished size of 42" x 48", but I decided I'd enlarge it to what I consider the ideal afghan size, 4' x 6' -- large enough to comfortably cover one ordinary-sized adult, yet not so large as to be unwieldy. This meant knitting 60 blocks instead of 48. I decided I would also make a matching throw pillow.

As to the yarn, it had to be a budget type yarn, because I needed a LOT of yarn for this project (1730 grams by my estimate). I looked in my stash and found some orange worsted yarn for the snowmen's nose, while a partial skein of Loops & Threads Impeccable Tweed in Walnut Tweed (leftover from the owl cushion already mentioned above) would do for the arms and top hat. I bought one skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Soft White for the snowflakes and snowmen, and for the body of the afghan I bought Bernat Super Value in Forest Green. I calculated that I needed 8 skeins of the Bernat Super Value. In January 2020, I began walking up to the Michaels at Toronto's Stockyards shopping centre once a week to buy a skein of yarn using Michaels' coupons, which only apply to one item per customer per day. Or rather, I intended to walk to Michaels once a week; the reality was that some weeks I wouldn't get around to it or I decided I'd rather buy something else at Michaels when I actually got there. As of the end of February 2020 I only had bought the one skein of Soft White and two skeins of the Forest Green. But hey, no rush, there was still lots of time to shop at Michaels before Christmas 2020 and get the rest of the yarn, right?

This blithe assumption turned out to be quite wrong, because of a little complication best known as the COVID19 pandemic. Michaels Ontario had to close in March, and when they reopened a few months later, they had no Bernat Super Value worsted in Forest Green. I waited several more months for them to restock, but it turned out that they'd ceased to stock it at all. By this point, in August, I'd begun working on the afghan and was getting anxious. I searched online, and found that Michaels had some more still in stock in their other stores across Toronto that I could order online and have shipped to my house. I ordered six skeins. Michaels sent me a bag of four skeins and I called them and reported that I was two short of what I ordered. The customer service person arranged for another shipment of two, and then it turned out that I later received the remaining two that I had originally ordered in a separate shipment plus the extra two sent to me because I'd complained of not receiving my full order. I do wish Michaels had added some kind of statement to the packing slip for the four in order to inform me that I would be receiving the extra two under separate cover. But at least now I had no worries about running out of yarn.

Here's the finished afghan. It's a little smaller than I hoped (47" x 68", not counting the fringe), but it will do. I began it sometime in early August, thinking I'd be done in a few months -- I usually can knock off an afghan in one to two months -- only to find that it dragged on for a soul-searing eternity during which I often felt despairingly that I would be working on it forever. It took me over six months to make this afghan and a matching throw pillow -- I took just a week or two off in that time to knit a glove and a half for the tam, cowl and glove set documented above. 

Why did it take so long? The afghan is a time-intensive design, of course, with its detailed little motifs. I did eventually get to the point that I had memorized the cabled and snowmen patterns, which helped some with speed, as I could make a block in an evening without so much as a glance at one of the charts. I was never able to do the same for the snowflake motif, and it took me several evenings to make each one. 

But it still shouldn't have taken me more than three to four months to make the afghan and cushion. I made quite a lot of mistakes. I got a bunch of cable squares made before I realized I'd done them wrong, and I did the same thing with the snowmen squares. I made about six snowflake blocks before I realized they were too wide. I think what happened was that the Red Heart Super Saver was a slightly bigger gauge than the Bernat Super Value. I ripped out all of them and reknitted them four stitches narrower than the pattern called for. They're still a little too wide compared to the cable and snowmen blocks, but it was workable. 

Seaming together the afghan blocks was a job in itself, but once that was done, I did enjoy getting to the point where I could begin working on the garter stitch trim on the four sides, because it meant I could use my brand new ChiaoGoo circular needle set for the first time. I'd wanted a new set for years. Then in early December when I realized I was going to have to spend Christmas alone (after an entire year spent alone) instead of going to my parents' house for a few days as I normally do, I went on Amazon to buy a few modest things to cheer myself up. Then I saw on my wish list that the price of this set was as low as I'd ever seen it, and I went a little mad and ordered one. 

When it arrived I sat down at my kitchen table with it and spent so long poring over its many attributes that my cat got jealous and threw a "PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEE" tantrum. Most of my belongings are handmade or thrifted or even found items that I upcycle, or things my woodworker dad makes for me, and even when I do buy something new it's usually from the dollar store or some other low budget place. I generally have to go with the cheapest option I can live with. And I'm fine with that -- I think I probably get more real enjoyment out of making and contriving and finding deals than I would if I could afford to just go to the mall and buy whatever I wanted.  But I have hardly ever owned anything top of the line in my life, and it was such a thrill to get something that is the best money can buy for once.  

This was my old, partially incomplete and partially broken set of thrift shop Denise circulars and the assorted circulars I owned prior to my ChiaoGoo set's arrival, so you can see why I was so excited. The Denise circs tended to come apart really easily. No matter how careful I tried to be, the needle would come off the line, dropping 50 or 60 stitches. I would groan and painstakingly pick them up again, and then five minutes later the needle would come off the circular line again. I'm amazed I didn't have a rage stroke. I'm going to give the assorted circulars to a friend of mine who has just begun knitting, but I really think the Denise set should go in the garbage. 

Here's a photo of the matching throw cushion. It is 20" x 20". The original plan was to make the cushion out of pieced blocks, just like the afghan, but I decided against going that route because it wasn't going to be possible to make the cushion the size I wanted it, and also because it was a lot of work. So, I adapted the cable pattern and used that for the cushion, knitting the cushion top in one long strip, folding it in half, and then seaming it on two sides and adding a zipper on the remaining open side. It's more neutral than Christmassy, but that means my sister will be able to leave this cushion out all year round if she likes. 

The zipper for the cushion. I used my "two crochet chains sewn on either side of the zipper" technique for this as I did with the owl cushion. I do wish I could have used a zipper in a shade that was closer to the green yarn colour, but between Fabricland only offering curbside pickup shopping these days (which would make if difficult for me to match the colour) and my super tight budget, I decided this olive-coloured zipper that was just sitting in my zipper box would have to do. I made my own pillow form for the cushion. Good thing I'd stocked up on polyfil early in 2020. 

I did not finish this project until February 13th, 2021. Meanwhile, of course, Christmas had long since passed. My sister's birthday is in mid-January, so I gave her the items I'd originally bought for her birthday for her Christmas present (my mother and sister came to my house in Toronto to do a curbside present delivery and pickup on December 23rd), and I told her that I was working on something special for her birthday present, though I was uncertain as to when I'd be able to give it to her. I still don't know when I'll be able to see her again. I could ship it to her, but that would be expensive and I can't bear to take the risk it might get lost in the mail, and also I want to see her reaction when she opens it. 

My sister has what I would categorize as three basic reactions to gifts. If she loves the gift, she'll laugh in a particular, delighted, staccato kind of way ("Haw! Haw! Haw!"). If she likes it, she just seems pleased, and talks about how she'll use it. If she doesn't like it, she is polite but unenthusiastic and unforthcoming. Of course I won't pressure her to like this afghan and cushion or complain if she doesn't, but I'll be watching her carefully when she opens it, and if I get the "politely unenthusiastic" reaction for something I worked six months to make and that is probably the most time intensive knitting project I've ever done, I think I'll die a little on the inside.  

This project used a tiny amount of orange yarn and perhaps 20 grams of the brown tweed I had in my stash. I had 60 grams left of the white, and thanks to the mix-up with the Michaels shipment, I finished this project with two almost untouched skeins of green yarn (I used just a little of one of them when I was finishing up the fringe), so that's a net stash growth of  436 grams. 

This is the first time in years that my stash got bigger instead of shrank -- when I tot up all the additions and subtractions of my seven projects, I find that my stash grew this past year by 176 grams. I blame that Michaels shipping mix-up -- without those two superfluous skeins, I would have had a stash decrease of 218 grams. 

I finished this project on February 13th, 2021, but I'm cheating a little and including it in my 2020 post. After all, I did knit 80% of it in 2020. 

Looking ahead to 2021, I have a list of 14 projects I would like to make. I don't know how many I will get to, especially given that I'm getting a late start on them, but there's nothing on the list that will be as much of a time hog as my sister's Christmas afghan, and I am resolving to take more care with my knitting (i.e., follow the pattern more carefully, do the math in advance to make sure things will work out as I want) so as to make fewer time-wasting mistakes. We'll see how that works out.